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Chairman’s briefing note

WTO’s Committee on Trade Facilitation – Summary of India’s

presentation

11 th – 12 th February 2019

One SAP Landscape for Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA)

National Committee on Trade Facilitation - India’s Experience

Trade Facilitation Agreement [TFA] is the first ever multilateral agreement

that aims to simplify customs regulations for cross-border movement of

goods and seek to enhance transparency in exim trade.

India actively participated in the negotiations of drafting text of the

agreement and ratified the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) on 22nd

April 2016, which came into force on 22nd February 2017. 72.3% of total

commitments were classified under Category “A” which means that

implementation of these commitments was there on the ground at the time

of entry into force, while remaining 27.7% of commitments were classified

under category “B” for which a ‘5 years’ transition was taken. India did not

classify any of the commitments under category “C”.

While implementing TFA, the major questions faced by Indian Policy

makers was to strike a balance between faster and smoother clearance with

minimum cost and higher compliance. To overcome this challenge and to

ensure all stakeholders are onboard with this objective, India constituted a

National Committee of Trade Facilitation (NCTF) headed by the top most

Civil Servant in the country i.e Cabinet Secretary, which would give this

work credibility as well as authority in order to coordinate amongst the

agencies [NCTF is mandated under Art 23.2 of the TFA].

The main principles followed while establishing NCTF was wide

representation from not only Government of India machinery but also

Private players such as commerce and industry associations, Freight

forwarders, Custom House Agents etc. Another important principle on

which NCTF works is the smooth and unhindered flow of information from

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the policy makers to the actual users and from users to policy makers in the

form of feedback. NCTF is, therefore, follows a two-way circular approach

in solving problems, which has been quite effective since its inception.

In order to achieve the objectives of NCTF, a three tiered structure was

envisaged – NCTF at the apex level; Steering Committee at the middle

level; and adhoc Working Groups at the lower level. At present we have 5

such Working groups.

In its early meetings, one of the major achievement of NCTF was to develop

and adopt a National Trade Facilitation Action Plan (NTFAP) for 2017-

2020 containing specific activities to further ease out the bottlenecks to

trade. The action points in the Plan is mapped to the WTO Trade

Facilitation Agreement (TFA) Articles and aligned to our policy objectives

on improving the Ease of Doing Business. Further, in order to monitor these

action points, an online platform has also been developed to keep track of

the updates with real time reporting through MIS.

A National Time Release Study is ongoing at present under the aegis of

NCTF to ascertain and work upon various time stamps for further reduction

of cargo dwell time.

Consistent trade facilitation efforts have contributed to a substantive

improvement of India’s performance in Trading Across Borders indicator

from 146 in 2017 to 80 in 2018 and 68 in 2019 as per the World Bank’s

Doing Business Report (DBR).

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